Still, good on her for not dipping into the emergency fund for not-an-emergency. That takes a lot of willpower, especially when it’s not like she has to talk herself out of buying a lunchtime burrito with that money, but an actual long-term, life-changing purchase.

Your sister is smart. I’d imagine having the kind of security of that big of a nest egg would bring is worth having to rent for the rest of your life.

There is a large group of people in this country who don’t have enough to live on under normal circumstances, and there is no advice that can possibly make that better. I mean, maybe someone who knows the ins and outs of your specific situation could help you know where to squeeze, but no generic article is ever going…

It’s not like most of us who traveled internationally during his brother’s term had to justify, oh, a multi-billion dollar unnecessary war that killed thousands. Even if I didn’t care about anything else he’s done, I’d be saying a sincere “Thanks, Obama,” for not having to have that uncomfortable conversation in…

I’m calling it now, this dude had a stroke like a year and a half ago and no one’s noticed until this.

There was no such thing as a KFC Double-Down fried chicken sandwich, either, until some beautiful madman created that. Food, like language, is in a constant state of glorious change.

It turns out that if you value “locally sourced” and other crunchynut buzzwords more than “sourced from a place who knows how to maintain proper cleanliness standards,” sometimes bad things happen. Alas, it does seem that they stood by those values, perhaps longer than they’ll be able to recover from.

I’m trying to slim down a bit for an upcoming vacation, but the last Chipotle story prior to this one precipitated a lunchtime burrito orgy that I had only minimal control over.

The Chipotle in the city where I work is as busy as it’s ever been, when I walk past it at lunchtime. The Chipotle in the suburb where I live has been a lot quieter when I go there around dinnertime.

The hammer is generally only used to get into the claws (the body shell can be split into top and bottom with a butter knife, and the interior shell is soft), but even with that limited use, I agree that they are wasteful and stupid.

Every day I thank the universe for allowing me to be born in the state of Maryland. My mother says the first time she was ever proud of me was when, at 6, I picked my first crab all by myself without wasting a ton of it. Mostly, she was just happy that I could manage for myself now and she could finally fucking eat.

Homeboy had better get down on his fucking knees and offer a sincere and direct “Thanks, Obama,” on life television. For saving the situation he royally fucked up, and saving the lives and livelihoods of the benighted constituents unlucky enough to have this jackass as a governor.

Nice to see New Hampshire growing their own Chris Christie. Why should New Jersey always get to be the craziest of the tiny eastern states?

I’m often jealous of my cat’s ability to interact with vertical spaces of our house in ways I can’t - the countertops become a highway, the bookshelf is a napping spot, etc. This home mod is a way to reintroduce some parity.

I was moderately upset last year when Leonard Nimoy died, but I was thinking this week that David Bowie’s passing is the first celebrity death I can remember that made me as sad as if someone I knew personally was gone (not counting my romantic grieving for Kurt Cobain during the early-aughts Nirvana revival, since I…

To be fair, he really just wanted to spend time with the pretty actress, and then put up with it when she was like “Um, can my friend come along?”

My mother and I could not be more physically different (starting with the fact that she’s about 4 inches shorter than me), but I’m still able to wear the 3 or 4 dresses that she managed to save from the 70's and 80's. One of them was hand-made for her by my great-great aunt, and I absolutely treasure it.

This one time at a Christmas party, I almost got stabbed in the eye by a high-kicking drunk friend’s 4-inch heel on her thigh-high synthetic-leather boot while she danced (alone, surrounded by less-drunk observers) to this song. That kind of counts, right?

I had to watch one episode as part of a writing class in high school (this would’ve been either the first or second season). I went to bed early instead and woke up early to write a fake “review” of the show I didn’t watch.

I used to work in a major museum that semi-regularly had famous people visit. I never cared about the people I saw (and can’t even remember most of them after the fact - I can’t remember if it was Charize Theron or Diane Kreuger or someone else who came in that one time) but I let it be known by my coworkers that if…